Misadventures In Babysitting
by SqueakyTheDuck
Summary: The station gets called out to the home of an inventor and get more than they bargained for when one of his machines is activated. Now, Johnny, Roy, Marco and Chet are toddlers. Can Cap and Mike handle four rambunctious little kids? Read to find out.
1. Encounter With The Reverse Ager

"No way!"

"Uh-huh!"

"You're bluffing!"

"I'm telling you, it's true!"

"Aaargh!" Captain Stanley exclaimed. "Will you twits _please _shut up!"

Johnny and Chet halted their argument and looked up at Cap.

"_Once_," Cap growled. "Just once, I would _like_ to see you two act your age!"

Before either could protest, the tones sounded. _Station 51, man injured. 22176 Lakeview Drive. Cross Street, Langley, time out 0845._

"Station 51, 10-4, KMG-365." Cap acknowledged the call.

The squad pulled out of the station with the engine following behind them. They pulled up to an odd-looking house and went up to investigate.

"In here!" They heard from the garage. "I'm in here." They entered the cluttered garage and found an old man with his leg caught on something. They couldn't tell what.

"Don't think I'm hurt too bad." The man said. "Got stuck while I was tryin' to fix this here machine." He motioned towards the strange contraption.

Within minutes they had the man freed. He had a fairly deep cut on his leg, so they sent him to Rampart for stitches and a tetanus shot. "Hey," he said as they loaded him onto the gurney. "I got a new invention over there. Can yeh turn it off for me so's the power don't run down?"

"Sure thing." Johnny replied. As the ambulance drove away, the men turned their attention to the odd-looking white device that stood before them.

"Where do you think the off switch is?" Chet asked.

"Maybe it's this red button here." Johnny suggested.

"Gage, don't you ever watch TV?" Chet replied. "A red button always activates the self-destruct sequence!"

"Oh, come on, Chet!" Johnny snorted. "That kinda stuff doesn't happen in real life!"

"How do you know?" Chet shot back.

"Well have you ever seen it happen?" Johnny asked.

"Have _you _ever seen it _not _happen?" Chet retorted.

"Shut up, both of you!" Cap snapped. "Back away from this thing. Go stand over there. Stoker, c'mere and see if you can help me figure out where the off switch is."

Mike stepped up to help. "Maybe it's this lever here." He suggested.

"Go ahead and give it a try." Cap instructed. Mike accordingly pulled the lever down. The machine began to whir and a blue light began to form at its tip. All of a sudden the light shot out from the nozzle and surrounded Johnny, Roy, Chet and Marco.

When the light died down, Mike and Cap ran forward to see if their friends were all right.

What they saw were three small children and a baby in place of the adults that had been there a moment earlier.

"Guys?" Cap queried.

"Cap," Mike said. "I think I know what this invention does. Look." He pointed to a label on the back of the machine. It read 'Reverse-ager'. "It's set to thirty." Mike indicated the meter on the side.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Cap asked, hoping he was wrong.

"Yep." Mike replied calmly. "It means your crew is now thirty years younger."


	2. The Misadventure Begins

"Aw great, now what? We're doomed. Why me!?" Cap paced back and forth frantically, looking back and forth between the machine and the four small children that had been his crew only moments before.

Mike made a mental note to start keeping a camera with him whenever he was around Cap. Talk about a priceless expression!

"Well," Mike offered, trying to withhold a grin. "You _did _tell them to act their age."

"Oh, you're a lot of help." Hank scowled at his engineer.

Mike held up his hands defensively. "Sorry." He said quickly, clearly anything but.

"Do you think this machine has a reverse switch?" Hank asked hopefully.

"Don't know." Mike answered. "But I don't think it'd be a good idea to mess with it anymore. We should just wait until the inventor gets back."

"So what are we gonna do in the meantime!?" Cap exclaimed.

"Keep them entertained?" Mike suggested flippantly, clearly not the least bit concerned about the whole thing.

Certainly not an easy task. Chet, Marco, and Roy had all been turned into two-year-olds, and Johnny, having just turned thirty a few months back, had been turned into a five-month-old baby.

Mike called Rampart and explained the situation to Dixie as best he could. After she managed to quit laughing, she informed him that she had spoken with the inventor and that he had told her that the machine did _not _have a reverse feature, but he was sure that he could easily install one.

Mike relayed this information to Cap. "He should be released soon, and he'll start work on it right away. Says it'll take about a day or so."

"A whole day." Hank muttered, trying to keep his composure. "We can handle four small children for a day, right?"

"We'd better hope so." Mike said.

Somehow they managed to get the four young children and both vehicles back to the station, and Hank reluctantly called McConikee and explained it the best he could, requesting that the station be taken out of service for the day.

"No, I'm serious, Chief." Mike listened in amusement as Cap tried to explain. "Come and see for yourself if you don't believe me. I don't know. Make something up. I don't know what!"

Mike quietly took the phone and said, "Chief, tell dispatch that we're having trouble with our vehicles and need some time to get them repaired. Yeah, we can get Charlie in on it if we have to, and 45 can run our calls for us. All right, thanks."

Mike hung up the phone. "Done."

"My engineer is smarter than me." Hank muttered to himself. Then, to Mike, "Or maybe you're just more patient when it comes to dealing with chiefs."

"Okay," He said, rubbing his hands together. "Now that we've got that settled, what's next?"

"We could start," Mike answered, with maddening composure. "By getting Chet away from the pantry."

Cap looked in the direction Mike was pointing and saw that the two-year-old Chet had found a box of cornflakes and had proceeded to dump them on the floor, and was finding it quite enjoyable to scoop up handfuls and throw them in the air.

"Yaaahh!" Cap exclaimed. "Chet, get away from there! Stop that!" Chet stuck his tongue out at Cap, then wandered to the other side of the room while Cap swept up the ruined cornflakes.

Almost immediately after he had finished this task he heard a wail from the other side of the room, followed by baby Johnny crying at the top of his lungs.

"Chet, don't pull Johnny's hair!" Cap rushed forward and picked up the howling baby in an attempt to calm him down. Chet had decided it would be fun to pull on the little tufts of black hair on Johnny's small head.

"Sheesh!" Cap grunted. "Even as babies they annoy each other!"

After 15 minutes Cap had managed to get Johnny calmed down and laid him back in the makeshift cradle that he and Mike had rigged up with one of the stokes—an idea they had gotten from a gag they had helped Chet and Marco put together a few years earlier—who'd have thought it would come in handy!

In this fifteen minutes Chet had managed to find more trouble by taking a crayon from the two-year-old Roy, who had subsequently snatched it back, resulting in the two of them rolling around on the floor fighting over it.

Mike had stepped in on this one and had settled it by breaking the crayon in half and giving each of them a piece of it. Roy was now sitting at the table, coloring happily, with the two-year-old Marco content to sit nearby watching.

Chet ate his half of the crayon.


	3. Stealing Cookies From A Baby

"Ooh, frisbee!"

"Yaaahhh!" Cap made a diving catch for the glass plate Chet had thrown.

"Nice catch." Mike commented coolly.

Cap put the plate back on the counter, then picked up the troublesome toddler. "Look, here, Chet." He said. "There has got to be something you can do to stay out of trouble. What do you want to do?"

"Color!" Chet answered, clapping his small hands together gleefully.

"All right." Cap conceded. He left Chet with Mike for a moment and went into his office. After rummaging around for a few minutes he found a few washable markers and headed back into the dayroom.

"Here." He handed the markers to Chet, who in turn examined each one carefully, deciding what color he wanted to use first.

Bearing the same round face and unruly brown curls, 'baby' Chet looked a great deal like his adult self. This effect was heightened when he uncapped the brown marker and drew a mustache on his face.

That did it.

Mike collapsed onto the couch, shaking with laughter.

Hank didn't find it so funny. He reached for a dishrag to wipe the marker off Chet's face. "Hold still!" he grunted as he knelt in front of the squirming toddler. "Mike!" He exclaimed. "How 'bout giving me some help here? Hold him still or something."

Mike chose 'or something'. He swiped the dishrag from Hank's hands and tossed it aside. "What'd ya do that for?" Hank exclaimed in surprise.

Mike shrugged. "Just let him keep the mustache." he suggested. "It won't hurt anything."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Hank admitted, releasing Chet and standing up.

He scowled. "You're right too much."

Mike grinned. "I'm sorry," he teased. "I'll try to be wrong next time."

Meanwhile Chet had wandered over to the table, where little Marco sat coloring contentedly. "C'mere." Chet said. "I wanna do something an' you're gonna help me."

"Why?" Marco asked.

"Cause," Chet answered. "I'm in charge. You gotta do what I say. C'mon."

"He talks pretty well for a two-year-old." Mike commented.

"This from the guy who didn't talk until he was five." Hank returned. Then, his attention being drawn back to Chet, "_What _is that little twit doing?"

Chet had led Marco over to the counter, and was attempting to climb onto the dark-haired toddler's shoulders.

"Hey, get down from there!" Hank rushed in, grabbing Chet and lowering him back to the ground. "What are you doing?"

Chet pointed to the jar on the counter. "Want a cookie." he said decidedly .

"Hmm, all right." Hank conceded. "But no more climbing on the counter. Just ask." That said, he took a cookie from the jar and split it in half, giving one half to Chet and the other to Marco.

"That was easy," he said triumphantly, walking back toward Mike.

"Don't be so sure." Mike pointed behind Hank, who in turn, looked back over his shoulder to see what Mike was referring to.

Chet was trying to take Marco's cookie half from him, and was being met with loud protests from the other boy.

"Hey!" Hank intervened once again. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Trading." Chet answered decidedly. "His is bigger than mine."

"That sure didn't look like trading!" Hank pointed out, on the verge of loosing his composure again. _Geez, _He thought._ Even my kids weren't this hard to deal with when they were toddlers._

"Hey Chet," Mike said softly. "If you wanted the other half, you should have asked Marco if he wanted to trade. Go ahead."

Chet scowled. "Wanna trade?" he asked his new partner in crime sullenly.

Marco thought for a moment. "Okay."

The two tots traded cookies peacefully and order was restored—for the moment.

Once Chet had polished off his cookie half, he took Marco by the arm and led him to the other side of the room. "C'mon, we're gonna play a game." he commanded.

Marco had apparently decided it would be easier to go with what Chet said than to fight him. He followed Chet without protest.

"Now, you stand over there." Chet ordered. Marco complied. "We're gonna play hide-and-seek. You count and I'm gonna go hide."

"Uno, dos tres…" Marco began.

"Nooo," Chet whined. "Say it right."

"I _am_." Marco insisted.

"No, say it 'one, two three…' like that." Chet instructed.

"Okay. One, two three…"

"No, you have to close your eyes." Chet interrupted. "Don't you know anything?"

"Fine." Marco said, closing his eyes. "One, two, three…"

"No, do it slower." Chet bossed.

"Marco's never gonna get past three." Mike whispered to Hank.

"At least it's keeping Chet out of trouble." Hank answered.

"Hey," Mike asked. "Do you think they'll remember any of this when they get turned back to adults?"

Before Hank could answer, 'baby' Roy toddled up to them and tugged on Hank's pant-leg. Hank looked down. "What is it, Roy?"

The toddler shifted uncomfortably. "Diaper wet." he announced.

Hank's expression turned from irritated to sheepish as he turned to Mike and said, in answer to his engineer's question, "I sure hope not."

_What marvelous misadventures await our friends? You'll have to wait and see. In the mean time check out my new E! fansite. You can find it in my profile. Just click the homepage link,__ and as long as you're there, why not join? A fansite's no fun if I'm the only one there._


End file.
